jMoore!

During the 5 years that I’ve been an affiliate, I haved tried to pay attention to what works for people that I know are successful. Even if I don’t know their websites, I listen to the topics they discuss and then use that information as a study list. Over and over again I revisit the idea of learning how to manipulate a datafeed so I can create a product site on steroids.

My first efforts were wasted on trying to read and understand the available manuals on MYSQL and PHP. I combined that trip through the pointless forest with asking questions of my geek sons, who only heard what they thought I was saying, which is spend a year of your life trying to build something for Mom. They didn’t say no, they just kept starting at the beginning of how to relate tables, which was not where my knowledge gap lives.

My next project actually brought me much closer to understanding some aspects of how to use datafeeds and also made me some money moving niche products. This was back a couple of years ago, when Carolyn Tang at ShareASale took the time to teach and promote the use of WebMerge, which is an application that takes a datafeed and creates static pages for you to upload. I was able to create 300, 400, even 1800 pages in about 10 minutes once I mastered the template creation part. And suddenly the products were selling because Google had something to index.

That spurred me on, but my “hit the wall” moment was when the merchant provided datafeed continually took me a week to clean up each time. By the time I got it cleaned up to use, it was time to start over. About that time, GoldenCan was peaking in popularity and I went back to using it almost exclusively with some success.

When PopShops came along, I loved it. I started testing GoldenCan pages vs PopShop pages and found that they were fairly equal in success. The real trick there is to surround them with some unique content that will keep them in the search engines, since the products themselves are being updated automatically when the datafeed updates, so everyone using these categories is going to have the same catalog on their site. You have some control over what’s showing, but you have to be creative in assembling your shops.

Just before Christmas I started some trial and error building with Datafeedr. (Disclosure: Affiliate link) This is an affiliate marketing plugin for WordPress that allows you to build any size store for your niche in a quick and easy way. Finally, just today I joined their affiliate program because even though I find some limitations in the program, I think that there are some positives that could be leveraged to increase your income.

Here’s what I’ve learned – good and bad – about this fairly simple site creation tool:

Negatives (for me, anyway)

• You have to be hosted on a Linux or Unix server. I’m not talking about your home machines; I’m talking about the hosting company you use for your sites. I use one hosting company that is exclusively Windows servers and so I moved a couple of sites over to the other hosting company in order to use Datafeedr.
• There are minimum PHP and MYSQL requirements. I’m still procrastinating on one site because it has a pretty big content database and I don’t want to risk breaking it while I upgrade the MYSQL. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then make sure you check your host for availability of the minimum requirements before you jump off the cliff
• The plugin gets upgraded pretty frequently to keep up with Wordpress changes and to add more and more networks to the affiliate merchant choices. The plugin is just enough different from typical Workpress plugins to be an irritant when it’s time to upgrade. It’s not that hard, or even time consuming, but you DO have to read the instructions and then pay attention or you’ll spend the rest of the hour banging your head on the desk.

Positives

• There are some excellent videos that show you exactly how to build a store, download the feed, activate the plug-in, etc. I’m more a reader-writer than a talker-listener, so I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a tutorial for people like me. Dave, however, watched the first video a couple of times and he was off…. building and maintaining several sites in the first couple of days.
• There’s almost too much product selection. That’s a good thing if you understand that a good niche is often a narrow niche. Be disciplined in your product selection; they have an awesome tagging set-up, and you’ll have more success. If you get carried away trying to be everything to everybody, you’re going to get a datafeed store so huge you’ll have trouble loading it automatically and will have to load it manually.
• The best positive of all for me is that one site I built is making more in commission than I’m paying for the 5 site package. The ability to upgrade your package was the closer for me because I didn’t want to pay for unlimited when I procrastinate everything, even making money.
• The aforementioned site was built for a domain name I’ve had parked for almost 2 years. I installed Wordpress a couple of months before I added the Datafeedr store and until I did the Datafeedr thing, the site was just sitting there with Hello World, or whatever that initial WP post is.
• I picked a pretty wide niche, but I narrowed it down by selecting almost a dozen categories within that niche. Using those same categories on Datafeedr, I picked products and picked products until I had an 18,000 product store, which meant I had to ftp it manually after several hours of being frustrated that the automatic upload didn’t work.
• Before I got the new header images built for the theme, I had sales. I was flabbergasted and felt like it was probably a fluke, but within days I was even getting small sales on merchants who were represented on the site only with a small banner in the sidebar. These guys weren’t even in the feed, so it was probably general traffic for that niche rather than any long-tale keyword that was being exploited.

Bottom line: Even though I’m part of their affiliate program now, I would only recommend Datafeedr if you’re already familiar with Wordpress enough to add and subtract plugins. I think you need at least that level of competence before you start paying for a datafeed source. If you already understand how to use a datafeed, then you don’t need Datafeedr. If you’re like me and understand the concept, understand the need to learn and just can’t make the jump into downloading a merchant feed, cleaning it up to match your own server, writing the php calls to get the information back down on your page the way you want it, then Datafeedr is probably going to help you make money.

I was concerned about the cost in the beginning, but I gave it the 3 month try at the 5 site package, which is just under $50 a month. Like I said, that one site exceeded that in the first 45 days. I am currently evaluating all my domains to see which ones can continue to produce with GoldenCan and PopShop and which ones could use the boost of Datafeedr. I may drop back to the 1 site package, which is $27 a month, or I may be able to justify the $97 unlimited package. I don’t like to waste money, though, so the $47 is probably where I’ll be for another couple of months.

1. It’s working now. The auto upgrade that’s built into 2.7 just did the upgrade without even jiggling the handle.
2. How I did it: I listened to Dave. I know, I know, I know.
3. Mechanics of doing what HE said: I tried 3 times and got the same fatal error – can’t unpack the upgrade. I decided to try the old plug-in (automatic upgrade for WP), which was still an active plug-in. I got this message: “You are already upgraded to the current version”. I figured that the plug-in version was seeing the unzipped package on the server and not going any further. So while I was in the server deleting the 3 downloaded zip files, Dave suggested I deactivate the plug-in and try again.

No way I could do that first, so I tried the plug-in version one more time after making sure there were no unzipped versions sitting on the server. Same message – you are already using the most recent version. So I deactivated the plug-in, tried the integrated one and with 1 click I was upgraded.

That still doesn’t solve the back-up your database and files problem I included in my rant this morning, but I’m halfway to nirvana now. Thank you, Dave! I’m glad I listened.

I was thrilled with the Automatic upgrader plugin for Wordpress. I used it successfully a couple of hundred times. Now it seems to be integrated into the new 2.7 and while that sounds wonderber, I’m not happy.
I gave it a try for the first time yesterday and got a big fatal error fail because it can’t unpack the new version it downloaded. Is that my problem? It will be easier to upgrade manually than figure that out.

The next thing is that the plugin stepped me through backups of my files and database as part of the auto process. I only had to click yes or no and click for next step and it was “handled” for me.

Now I get a warning that I should backup databases and files before upgrading. Duh. I know that. Getting it done is something else. So I clicked on the warning link and lo and behold it takes me to the Codex so I can follow all the different instructions for how to back up.

If I wanted to do it that way, I would have started there. Sorry, but something that starts with “automatically” does not end with me doing it myself.

Hopefully, I’ll have an update in a day or two that declares this problem solved. This is the main reason I’m not an early adapter.

I groaned when I saw the news this morning. WordPress 2.6.3 showed up on the dashboard and to compound the horror, it’s a security upgrade. Seems there’s a hole in the feed that brings you the news of the WordPress world.

When I clicked to read more I discoverd that there are only 2 files needed to complete the upgrade and since they both go to the same includes directory, I decided to download them on the spot and just fire up the FTP engine.

I printed my domain organization list and saw that I never cleaned it up when I upgraded all of them to 2.6.2. I started sending the 2 files up to the first server and doublechecked to make sure nothing looked broken. The nag for 2.6.3 went away and everything looked fine. 5 seconds.

When I came here to post, I realized that I should test the automatic upgrade, since I’ve raved about it in the past. I’m a big fan, but today I’m just going to upload the 2 files in question via FTP instead. I tested the automatic upgrade on this site and it went through every step, backing up, unzipping, maintenence mode, etc. And when it reactivated the plugins, I got a warning that BUMPzee had to be manually reactivated. So I spent almost a minute and a half with the automatic upgrade vs 5 seconds on the FTP 2 files.

I’m off to upgrade the rest of my list. At 5 seconds each, I might not have to stop for a bathroom break and a snack before I’m done!

Yesterday, I challenged myself to print my domain spreadsheet and see how many I could get upgraded to 2.6.1 before the long work-day was over.  Please note that I don’t usually spend 8 hours at a stretch with my butt in the chair working on serious stuff, but yesterday was going to be one of those days.

I got quite a few blogs updated by lunchtime.  I love the Wordpress Automatic Upgrader, but I did not have the latest version loaded into every site, so I had to do that for awhile.  Right after lunch, I decided to give my hubby a gift and update his most neglected blog.  When the WPAU went out to get the latest WP files and unzip them for installation, the version number changed from 2.6.1 to 2.6.2.

I did some checking and the announcement wasn’t official yet, but for a few minutes I felt as though I had washed my car and made it rain.  I was stomping around and going to give up on work for the day.  Go shopping! Take a nap! Get groceries! 

Then I realized that if I just kept going, I could wake up tomorrow to something that had never happened before – I would be a site or two ahead of the WP upgrade curve.  Let them announce a new version!  I would already be done with a few.  So I kept working.

This morning, my husband was quick to tell me that 2.6.2 was available.  Of course, he was privy to my tantrum yesterday, so it was just his way of twisting my tail.  I sent him off to play plugin master on some of his sites and I started in again.

Now it’s almost bedtime and I’ve been working almost non-stop all day.  I’m within site of my goal to have every single wordpress site upgraded to 2.6.2 within 48 hours of the announcement.  I think I’ll make it this time.  I bet you could make money on the odds that 2.7 must be scheduled for the end of the week.

When you have multiple sites, some with multiple installations of WordPress, it’s a really sinking feeling to see “Security Fix – Upgrade immediately” on the dashboard when you log in to work.  This morning, DH got to work first and saw the news in a tech feed.  Oh, man – we weren’t done upgrading everything to 2.3.2 yet.  There’s goes the day.

Don’t get me wrong.  I absolutely love WordPress and the majority of our sites are built with WordPress, or with WordPress in a subdirectory, or even with several WP blogs on the same domain.  But upgrading is always attention-intensive.  Backup the database, backup the files, remove some WP files, but DON’T ever remove this WP file.  We don’t have Fantastico or anything on either server, so it’s all done by hand.  The last round of upgrades involved several new installs and was also the intensive training for aforementioned DH who has been limited to finding and pasting coupon links until that day.

So….. my point?  The tech feed that notified us of the required upgrade also brought the plug-in Wordpress Automatic Upgrade to our attention.  I read through all the old comments to see if I could get a feel for the developer and his responsiveness to issues – it appeared that this plug-in would either be the best thing we ever found, or it wouldn’t work at all.   So I set up our testing parameters and we got to work.

First, we tried it on a site that is still pretty non-productive and sits on a host account where the dashboard is the least familiar to us.  There is no automatic “install WordPress” that we’ve found and fixing file errors takes longer because of our learning curve.   It worked perfectly and took less than 10 minutes with both of us reading every screen twice and discussing it and making notes. 

Next, we did one on the other host, where the majority of our sites have lived for several years.  We wanted to try one there that had a database to itself and then progress to a batch of domains where the WordPress installs share one database and each have their own table prefix.  By the time I got done with the first one and started on the shared db sites, DH had upgraded every single site on the other host.  He had discovered the “automatic” key and pushed it (just like a guy) and it worked.  He said it took about 45 seconds.

The “automatic” option worked fine on that host, but we discovered that it would not work on the other host at all.  Each and every time it failed immediately on Step 2, which is back up database.  I could see that it was tripping over tables it found in the db; tables that were not on the list it was looking for.  Each time, it had to stop and say failed instead of just asking which tables, the way it does in manual mode.  It was not hard at all to click the manual mode button from the failure screen, so it didn’t really take any more time.  I was upgrading sites in less than 5 minutes each.  Don’t forget that this was the first use, so we had to FTP the plug-in up to each blog directory, activate it and THEN begin the upgrade. 

I finally got efficient and started uploading the plug-in on site after site without stopping to activate or continue the upgrade.  It was so much quicker to put the plug-in file where I could grab it easily off my pc and ftp it to each site without leaving the ftp program.  DH came right behind me, activating the plug-in and doing the upgrade. 

Here’s the link: Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plug-in. Download and test it for your sites. Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about this plug-in except what I have written here. As indicated above, I had a bug when using the automatic mode. I am not responsible for anything except maybe saving you some time if it works with your host set-up. Enjoy.